LIQUID ELECTRICITY AND NANO BATTERIES FOR BETTERMENT OF

TRANSPORT INDUSTRY
The reason why electric cars aren’t everywhere is simple — at the end of their range,
they have to be stationary for hours while the batteries are recharged.
This is a pity, because even cars recharged from ‘dirty’ power stations are three times
more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles. That’s because only 20 per
cent of the energy from gasoline or diesel actually reaches the wheels; in an electric car,
it’s 60 per cent.
What recharging does is to change the state of the electrolyte fluid in the batteries. Now
a Dutch government research organization, the Innovation Network in Utrecht, has
come up with a solution by standing the problem on its head.
Just pump the spent electrolyte out and pump in freshly charged electrolyte — literally,
liquid electricity. This would take little more time than filling up with fossil fuel and the
spent electrolyte can be recharged and re-sold: you would pay for the difference in
electric charge.
It gets better. The Innovation Network foresees a new generation of ‘photon farmers’
using wind, solar or waste biomass to make clean electricity to recharge electrolyte and
sell it at filling stations.
Nearly all farmers have enough space on their properties to build wind turbines, solar
collectors or biomass plants. And it would end the craziness of using food plants such
as corn and sugar cane to produce ethanol, a practice that is already driving the price of
food almost beyond the reach of the world’s poorest populations.

Liquid electricity
Liquid electricity is a fictional liquid substance that often appeared in comedy short films
of the silent film era. It is the "distilled essence of electricity" in liquid form, a (usually)
glowing substance easily stored in bottles. It provides fantastic energy and super-speed
when used as a fuel for automobiles, aircraft, and machines of all sorts. One variant of
liquid electricity could be drunk by humans, who often did so for comedic effect in silent
film comedies. The use of "liquid electricity" as a comedic plot device was often used by
filmmakers as a way to present "speeded-up motion " and demonstrate the use of this
special effect in film. The motion picture industry was in its infancy in the early 20th
century, and the use of slow motion and fast motion effects were a new novelty to movie
going audiences. In 1987's Space balls, a similar substance called "Liquid Schwartz" is
used to power a spaceship in the same manner as liquid electricity.

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Re-charging your electric car in the same amount of time it would take to fill your tank
with petrol or diesel. That is the only realistic option for 'electrifying' road transport.
Scientists worldwide agree that electric transport will be inevitable in the long run, but so
far it has proved impractical.
The main problem with the current generation of electric cars is the amount of time it
takes to charge the batteries. Even the best electric car has a radius of only a few
hundred kilo meters, after which the car has to remain stationary for hours to recharge
the batteries for the next drive. This is the one and only major obstacle preventing the
large-scale introduction of electric transport.

Pre-charged battery fluid

The Dutch Innovation Network has come up with an idea that radically changes the
situation. What it boils down to is that, in future, electric cars will no longer need to be
charged for hours, but will be filled up with pre-charged battery fluid; let's call it liquid
electricity. Farmers across the world will then be in a position to generate additional
income by using wind, biomass or solar power to pre-charge battery fluid and sell it to
passing motorists.

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"Electric cars are very clean: they don't emit fine dust or carbon dioxide from their
exhaust pipes, what is more, they don't even have exhaust pipes. In addition, an
electrical car produces no noise, which is of course also an environmental problem.
However . another important advantage is, which is that for cars, electricity is a
fundamentally more efficient form of energy than petrol or diesel fuel. Only 20 percent of
the energy contained in the gas tank of a normal car ever reaches its wheels in the form
of kinetic energy, mainly because of friction and heat losses, whereas 60 percent of the
energy stored in the batteries of an electrical car is converted into motion.

These figures show that an electric car is always at least three times as environmentally
friendly as a petrol or diesel powered car, even when the electricity is generated by
'dirty' power plants.

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100-percent environmentally neutral
We Network would much prefer clean power, to ensure 100 percent environmentally
neutral electrical cars. Which is why they came up with the idea of photon farmers. The
main advantage to power stations in farmyards is that farmers have the necessary
space to generate clean power.

Many Farmers could build a wind farm, while coffee farmer could produce electricity by
gasifying the coffee-bean husks that he would otherwise discard. And could place rows
of solar panels in between rows of tea bushes.

Of course, this is all still in the future, but Innovation Network have already started up a
research project, the first phase on the road to actual applications.
"This type of technology has only recently been developed, and the first phase of
research will be stationary, in other words not involving moving vehicles. Wind farms will
be built at farms to store power in battery fluid. The electrolyte, as it's officially called,
will then preserve the power until the moment it is actually needed."

"All we need to do now is develop the best possible electrolyte. Once we've sorted that
out, we will move to the next phase: a filling station for liquid electricity. It sounds
fantastic, but the technology already exists, just not for vehicles."
The Vanadium Redox Battery
It sounds like a great idea for electric car transport - filling up with ‘recharged electrolyte
- but that means that you have to empty your car before you can fill it up again.
Vanadium redox batteries are low cost, low environmental impact batteries that have a
superior deep cycling life and can be mechanically refueled in minutes. Suitable for
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green energy storage, backup power, electric vehicles and utility load leveling / peak
shaving.

It is a low cost, low environmental impact battery that has a superior deep cycling life
and can be mechanically refueled in minutes.
The vanadium redox battery stores energy in a liquid electrolyte solution of vanadium
pentoxide dissolved in sulphuric acid. The electrolyte can be charged or discharged by
pumping it through the battery stack and either supplying electric power to the stack or
taking power from the stack. It can also be recharged by having the spent electrolyte
pumped out and a fresh charge of electrolyte pumped in.
The spent electrolyte can then be recharged in another battery with electricity from the
mains or from renewable energy sources. This raises the opportunity for the
establishment of refueling stations so that electric vehicles could exchange their
electrolyte and then continue on their way with no more delay than if refuelling with
petrol or diesel
vanadium battery info - The vanadium redox flow battery was developed by Professor
Maria Skylass-Kazacos and her team at the University of New South Wales, Australia. It
is a low cost, low environmental impact battery that has a superior deep cycling life and
can be mechanically refuelled in minutes.
The vanadium redox battery stores energy in a liquid electrolyte solution of vanadium
pent oxide dissolved in sulphuric acid. The electrolyte can be charged or discharged by
pumping it through the battery stack and either supplying electric power to the stack or
taking power from the stack. It can also be recharged by having the spent electrolyte
pumped out and a fresh charge of electrolyte pumped in.
The spent electrolyte can then be recharged in another battery with electricity from the
mains or from renewable energy sources. This raises the opportunity for the
establishment of refueling stations so that electric vehicles could exchange their

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electrolyte and then continue on their way with no more delay than if refuelling with
petrol or diesel

Vanadium battery info - Liquid electricity pumped as the fuel of the future. The
technology may eventually allow electric cars to be refueled at future versions of today's
petrol stations, doing away with the need to routinely replace bulky batteries or spend
hours recharging them from power mains. The new battery stores power in tanks of
vanadium sulphate dissolved in sulphuric acid. Found in Western Australia, vanadium is
a metal used to make stainless steel. Dr. Jacques explained that when a vanadium
battery runs down, the owner merely has to drain the discharged liquid and refill the
tank.
Liquid electricity may be the car fuel of the future. You can charge the liquid up with
power, and then transport it by tanker to a filling station. Cars can empty their
discharged liquid and refill with charged up liquid and drive using pollution-free electrical
power. Pollution producing petrol is replaced by elegant electricity.
Politics and the power of entrenched economic interests aside, the best way to reduce
carbon emissions is to utilize the ever cleaner, greener, more renewable grid to power
transportation. Only grid-rechargeable cars can attain the end goal of zero-emissions
and ensure fuel price stability. Plug-in cars make individual and business investment in
solar PV more economically compelling and intellectually comprehensible.

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The near-term goal of true zero-emission driving can only be achieved with electricity
into batteries. (Fuel cells, even with hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private
investment, remain decades from marketability for cars. Hydrogen will require hundreds
of billions of dollars in infrastructure development, will be generated with fossil fuels for
the foreseeable future, is less efficient than electricity, and presents storage and
pressurization challenges).
True well-to-wheels zero emission driving can only be achieved near-term with
renewably generated electricity, i.e. solar, wind, hydro. (Biofuels can never achieve
zero-emissions and require massive amounts of electricity and fossil fuels to be created.
In addition, evidence suggests biological matter is more efficiently used for electricity
generation than liquid fuel creation.)

Altair nano
The advance of battery technology is getting a boost from a Reno-based company
called Altair nano whose specialty is nanotechnology. The firm has developed a battery
whose negative electrode -- the anode -- is made from nano scale titanium.

Less electrical resistance so the battery can handle higher current loads -- and less loss
of energy to waste heat, which translates into greater efficiency.
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The battery is being put to the test by a car company, a global power company and the
US Navy for three separate applications, all of which save energy and reduce CO2
emissions: as the battery inside a plug-in electric vehicle, as a storage and grid
regulation device to complement wind and solar energy and as a replacement for back-
up diesel generators on warships.
Navy Tests Battery as Replacement for Backup Generators
The US Navy is running a test to replace the backup generators on warships, saving
diesel fuel, CO2 emissions and a lot of taxpayer money. They hope to save $1.6 million
in diesel per year for each ship. Multiply that by the 100 or more warships in the Navy
fleet, and that’s a lot of diesel, money and CO2.
Warships keep a backup diesel generator running at all times. The reason is that even a
momentary electric outage could be catastrophic to the operation of the electronic
warfare systems. If the main generator goes down, a ship could be hit or sunk before a
backup generator could start.
The trial of the Altair battery is using a 2.4 megawatt version. The testing was
announced in last quarter’s conference call for investors, but they didn't divulge details
of when it would begin or how long it would last. The Department of Defense and the
Navy are well known for very long, extensive testing, so don’t expect any news for a
while.
So it may be some time before your local battleship sports one of these, but ongoing
results are sure to help technology development.
AES Grid Tests Finished
On July 8, Altairnano released the results of testing t he battery for managing grid scale,
real-time energy fluctuations in milliseconds. How good is the battery at regulating
irregular power supply from wind and solar sources?
The higher current flow of Altair's battery is the key advantage here because it means
the battery can respond quicker and with more power to smooth out larger grid swings
than other batteries can. The testing was done by a third party tester, KEMA, for AES,
an international power conglomerate with 123 power plants on five continents.

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They tested two batteries, each rated at 1 gig watt, 250 kilowatt-hour and 300 amp-
hours. In one test, each battery was able to repeatedly charge or discharge 250
kilowatts in 15 minutes. That is, at a 1 megawatt per hour rate. They also tested
something called frequency regulation. The battery was switched from charging to
discharging every 4 seconds, continuously for several hours. A drop in wind speed can
lead to a grid frequency drop and subsequent power problems, as it did in Texas last
February.
The battery can respond within 1 second to charge or discharge at any power level,
including the full 1 megawatt power. Each battery is big, the size of a tractor-trailer and
multiple units can be combined to scale up for more power.
Here's what Chris Shelton, Director of Energy Storage Development at AES, said of the
results:
Fast-responding, high-efficiency energy storage systems such as these will create a
more resilient grid and allow for increased use of variable generating sources such as
wind and solar.
The KEMA report also noted the batteries can be used for ramp-rate regulation for solar
and wind power and for critical peak-price response.
The measure of efficiency in batteries is called round-trip efficiency -- how much
electricity you get back out versus how much you put in. If you were able to charge a
battery with 100kW and then to discharge 50kW, he efficiency would be 50/100 or 50%.
This is a critical feature for grid regulation because every kW lost to low efficiency is a
kW the utility company can’t sell. And selling kW is how they make money. They don't
want to see 10% of their inventory vanish any more than any other business would.
The efficiency for this battery was excellent at 91-97%, depending on the discharge
rate. As is typical, the efficiency goes down a little when you discharge at the full 1

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megawatt rate because electrical resistance goes up at higher current rates. For
comparison, this is much better than the 65-70% round-trip efficiency for an NGK
sodium sulfur battery that was tested last year for the same kinds of applications by
Sandia National Laboratories.
Testing is hardly finished.
Like the Navy, power companies are also known for very careful extended tests. The
point of these trials was to see if it was worth doing the next round of tests. And KEMA
says the battery is now ready for pilot tests. In an earlier conference call, the CEO said
that products might be announced and offered before the end of this calendar year
without any details about what exactly those products would do.

Altair Nanobattery Life Breakthrough

Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. (NASDAQ: ALTI), a leading provider of advanced
nanomaterials for use in energy, automotive, life sciences and industrial applications
has announced that, in ongoing testing, it has completed 15,000 deep charge/discharge
cycles of its NanoSafe battery cells. Even after 15,000 cycles the cells still retained over
85% of their original charge capacity. This represents a significant improvement over
conventional, commercially available rechargeable battery technologies such as lithium
ion, nickel metal hydride and nickel cadmium.

The battery cells were tested in Altairnano’s labs at

6 minute charge and discharge rates. They were deep charged and discharged
meaning they were taken to 100% charge and 0% charge respectively during the 6-
minute cycles. Although tests involved full charges and discharges, partial charging and
discharging of the battery does not appear to impact the life or the holding charge
capacity of the batteries i.e. they exhibit no memory loss.
In theory, a 15,000 charge cycle life would translate into a battery that would last greater
than 40 years if it was charged daily, as would be the case in an electric vehicle or plug-

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in hybrid electric vehicle environment. However, in practice, other wear and tear factors
would realistically limit the actual life of the batteries to probably 20 years.
“These results represent a remarkable achievement by our battery development group.
We believe that the commercial implications of such an extended life battery are
significant and would seem to provide us with an as yet unmatched competitive
advantage in the electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle markets, and
potentially other markets,” said Altairnano President and CEO Alan J. Gotcher Ph.D.
The following excerpt from an Altairnano article on NanoSafe Battery Technology extols
the power virtues of their batteries. It's well worth reading the 4 page pdf to get details of
their technology.
NanoSafe batteries deliver power per unit weight and unit volume several times that of
conventional lithium ion batteries. Altairnano laboratory measurements indicate power
density as high as 4000 W/Kg and over 5000W/liter. By using nano-titanate materials as
the negative electrode material, the formation of an SEI is eliminated. (When a lithium
ion battery, with a carbon negative electrode, is first charged a protective layer (called
the Solid Electrolyte Interface or SEI) is formed on the surface of the highly reactive
negative electrode.) In addition, the nano-titanate particles are up to 100 times smaller
than a typical graphite particle thereby greatly reducing the distance a lithium atom must
travel to be released from the particle. These properties also mean that even at very
cold temperatures, a nano-titanate battery will produce high power.
The same technology also dramatically increases battery charge and discharge rates;
rapid charge is important for next generation electric vehicles so they could be charged
in a few minutes rather than hours as with current lithium ion technology. The NanoSafe
cell has also demonstrated that surges of power can be delivered without risking
thermal runaway or performance damage to the battery.
The first Altairnano NanoSafe™ batteries, based on this technology, were delivered in
September 2006.

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ALTI 1-yr. chart

Altairnano lithium titinate battery Run Car

This is the new Phoenix SUT, [Sport Utility Truck], using the quick-charge
AltairNanoSafe battery pack.

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Phoenix PEV Saga Continues
Phoenix Motorcars planned to sell 500 plug-in electric sport utility trucks (SUT) last year
using Altairnano's battery. They even had 300 orders, but what they didn’t have was the
money to build a production line.
Financing managed to arrive this year, so the new plan is to reach full production in
2009, with some vehicles delivered this year. They’ve also added a model they call an
SUV to the lineup, though it looks more like a hatchback sedan. For now, they will only
sell to fleet operators, most notably Pacific Gas & Electric. But you might be able to buy
one in 2010.
Originally Phoenix had planned on using a 70kW battery, but this year’s models have
been redesigned to use an 1100 pound 35kW battery pack. This gives them a range of
100 miles on one charge. The high current rate of the battery means the battery can
recharge in 10 minutes, but that requires high current in the charging equipment, too, so
you’ll need to use a 250kW charger, something you aren't going to be able to do from
home. The high charging rate also comes into play when the battery is charged in the
other typical EV way, from regenerative braking. Braking actually produces so much
current that other batteries can’t use it all without overheating. The Altairnano battery
can handle three times as much power, so it manages to save more of the current
generated by braking.
The faster charging also means that filling stations for PEVs become far more practical.
Drivers are unlikely to wait 30 minutes for a charge, but 10 minutes is quick enough to
be realistic. The high power required for a fast charge would require some major
infrastructure improvements: a station that offered 4 charging bays would need 1
megawatt. That's a power level characteristic of a neighborhood utility substation, not
your local Texaco.
If the infrastructure can be worked out, it still might make more sense for every
neighborhood parking spot and apartment dweller to get a parking meter style charger
installed. Owners with garages will likely opt for wiring and chargers to have convenient,
if slower, home off-peak charging.
The Altairnano battery has its drawbacks. The biggest is its density, which is a measure
of energy stored per unit of mass or volume.
Put simply, Altair's batteries can’t hold as much charge as its competitors, which means
shorter range for a PEV or shorter charge life for a cell phone or laptop.
There was also a potential overheating problem in the Generation 1 version of the
battery used by Phoenix. That problem was discovered by Altairnano and resulted in a
large warranty claim against Altairnano and a $10 million dollar write-off. Phoenix has
been using the Generation 2 since late last year, and there has been no sign of the
earlier problem.
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There are a lot of competing battery manufacturers, and some of them, especially
A123Systems, have hauled down more big deals. That said, developing batteries for the
PEV market is going to be a marathon, not a sprint, so Altairnano's high current solution
may still play a large role.

A Few More Nano Details

How does the Altairnano battery achieve higher current flow and run so efficiently? Well,
the reason for both of these is the low resistance in the battery. Because resistance is
low, higher current flows through the battery. And because of the low resistance, less
energy is turned into heat and lost, so the efficiency is higher.
The next question is this: How did they get the resistance to be so much lower than
other batteries? Conventional lithium ion batteries use a copper anode coated with
graphite. When ions, the positively charged atoms that carry the electric charges, try to
pass through the graphite, it meets high resistance because graphite isn’t very porous,
and it is actually such a tight squeeze that the graphite has to deform.
Altairnano makes nano-particles of a lithium titanate oxide spinel (that’s a combination
of lithium, titanium and oxygen in a particular crystalline structure) and coats it on an
aluminum anode. Because the coating is made of nano-sized particles, it has 100 times
more surface area to offer the migrating ions. The larger pores in this coating also easily
accommodate an ion without deforming.
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Graphite coated anodes have another risk that Altairnano avoids. Engineers politely call
it thermal runaway, but you could just as well call it a fire. If that graphite coating cracks
for any reason, the battery can heat up and catch on fire. This is the exact problem that
led to the massive laptop battery recalls in the last few years.

The new Nano technology batteries from A123 Systems and Altair
Nanotechnologies makes a new type of bus system feasible. These batteries can be
charged very quickly (<10Min), many, many times. If a rapid charger is placed at one or
both ends of a bus route, a bus could run most of the time on these batteries, charged
every time it reaches the terminus of its route.

This new system has all the well documented advantages of an electric bus system
(trolleybus) but without the overhead wires. It is clean, quiet, and people friendly, but
almost as easy to deploy as a polluting diesel bus system.
The name "Nano bus" was chosen because these are hybrid electric buses that use the
new nano-technology based batteries such as the NanoSafe battery from Altair
Nanotechnologies and Nano phosphate batteries from A123 Systems.
Given that these new batteries get 4,000 to 20,000 cycles or more, and can be charged
in 5-10 minutes, if a rapid charger is placed at both ends of a bus route, a bus could run
on these batteries, charged every time it reaches the terminus of its route.
For example, the bus #33 here in Granada, Spain goes about 10KM from one end of its
route to the other end. At each end, it waits for about 5-10 minutes before turning
around and going the other way.
So, if a bus is electrically powered using nano batteries, and has a 10 minute charger at
each end of its route what are the advantages?
1) A LOT fewer batteries than an battery electric bus that only charges at night. It only
needs a range of 10KM, plus a margin for safety. This lowers cost, improves reliability,
and decreases weight.
2) Permanent electrical infrastructure is small - one charger at each end of the route.
Compared to all the wires for an electric trolley-bus like in San Francisco it is miniscule.

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While the best solution would be a 100% electric bus, this is impractical, since if an bus
gets stuck in traffic with the A/C on full blast, it can run out of power and be stranded -
not a good situation! Instead, the Nano bus needs a backup diesel generator which can
provide enough power to run the bus if necessary.

Fortunately, 99% of the technology for a Nano bus already exists. A Nano bus can be
quickly created just by adding high speed battery chargers to existing Hybrid Diesel
Electric buses -See System Design - Hybrid Diesel Electric. Current diesel electric
hybrid buses have electric drive, batteries, and a diesel generator. All they are lacking is
a way to rapidly charge the batteries at each end of the bus route. Adding this relatively
simple feature converts a 100% diesel powered bus (hybrids still run on diesel), to a 70
- 90% electric bus. This is an incredible leap forward in public transportation, with
virtually no changes to existing bus designs.
Conclusion: With the new rapid charging nano-batteries, it is now possible to deploy
an electric bus system almost as easily and cheaply as a diesel bus system. In fact, if
you look at fuel savings over several years, the Nano bus system should be cheaper
than a diesel bus system!

Nano bus Advantages over Diesel Buses

To the passenger -
-Quieter, calmer electric ride
-Powerful but smooth acceleration and braking
-Sense of pride in helping the environment
-No diesel fumes
To the public generally -
-Zero pollution emissions in the city streets, emissions move to the power plant
-Lowest possible pollutants and CO2 into the environment as a whole
-Able to use zero pollution renewable energy such as wind and solar
-Uses domestic electric supplies instead of imported oil
-Reduces street noise
-A quieter, cleaner city
To the operator -
-Much lower and more stable fuel costs
-Better ridership (more paying customers!)
-Zero emissions to meet all current and future laws
-Can replace diesel buses incrementally without changing routes
-Very low infrastructure costs and planning compared to trolleybus and tram

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